This description relates to radiation detectors, and, more particularly, to a system and method for measuring peak skin dose of a patient directly on a patient examining table.
During fluoroscopic medical imaging procedures, injury to a patient and/or doctor may occur due to excessive exposure to radiation, and skin damage is a risk to both doctors as well as patients. To minimize a dose of radiation during such procedures, it is important to measure the peak dose delivered to the skin during fluoroscopic procedures. However, measurement of the peak skin dose has been challenging, and at least some known imaging systems do not include methods for tracking peak skin dose. Systems which include skin dose monitoring commonly employ calculation and estimation techniques in order to estimate peak skin dose. The estimate involves tracking the patient position and the X-ray tube output to track the peak skin dose delivered to the skin. Those systems do not typically include changes due to an examining table on which a patient is positioned or the patient geometry, for example, a size and a weight of the patient. The examining table may include operating, surgical, or other patient or workpiece support table.
Additionally, dose information for fluoroscopic procedures is also projected or modeled based on the position of the patient and the characteristics of the X-ray tube.
Commercial systems do not exist for the active measurement of peak skin dose across the full area of exposure. Dosimeters are available for personal exposure at a fixed point. Currently dosimeters are available for personal exposure at fixed points and a peak skin dose is estimated from the fixed point exposure, the known properties of the X-ray tube output, the known properties of the examining table on which the patient is positioned, and patient geometry. However, such dose calculations are merely estimates, which are not totalized in real-time.